Sundaland

My book testimonial by ChatGPT.

Message: Please explore key points about "Sundaland: Tracing the Cradle of Civilizations" by Dhani Irwanto.

Reply:
*"Sundaland: Tracing the Cradle of Civilizations"* by Dhani Irwanto delves into the history and significance of Sundaland, a submerged landmass in Southeast Asia that includes parts of what is now the Java Sea, the Sunda Shelf, and surrounding areas. Here are some key points explored in the book:

1. **Geological and Historical Context**:
- **Sundaland**: Irwanto examines Sundaland as a once vast landmass that was connected to the Asian mainland during the last Ice Age, before rising sea levels submerged it. This region includes parts of modern-day Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand.
- **Sea-Level Changes**: The book discusses how fluctuating sea levels during the Pleistocene epoch led to the submergence of Sundaland, potentially impacting ancient human settlements and civilizations.

2. **Ancient Civilizations**:
- **Prehistoric Cultures**: Irwanto explores the possibility that advanced prehistoric civilizations existed in Sundaland. He suggests that these civilizations might have left behind significant archaeological and cultural remnants that could be linked to the rise of later known civilizations.
- **Cultural Continuity**: The book examines how the myths, legends, and cultural practices of present-day Southeast Asian societies might reflect ancient traditions and knowledge from Sundaland.

3. **Atlantis Connection**:
- **Theory of Atlantis**: Irwanto connects the concept of Sundaland with the legend of Atlantis, proposing that Sundaland could be the inspiration for the Atlantis myth. He argues that the story of a sunken civilization could have originated from the real events of Sundaland's submersion.

4. **Archaeological Evidence**:
- **Underwater Discoveries**: The book reviews underwater archaeological findings and research that might provide clues about ancient settlements and structures in the submerged areas of Sundaland.
- **Comparative Analysis**: Irwanto compares archaeological evidence from Sundaland with other ancient civilizations to identify similarities and possible influences.

5. **Cultural and Mythological Significance**:
- **Southeast Asian Legends**: Irwanto explores local myths and legends from Southeast Asia that may have roots in the historical and geographical context of Sundaland. He looks at how these stories have been preserved and transformed over time.

6. **Implications for Historical Understanding**:
- **Rewriting History**: The book suggests that understanding Sundaland and its potential influence on early civilizations could lead to a reevaluation of historical timelines and the development of ancient societies.
- **Historical Legacy**: Irwanto posits that the historical legacy of Sundaland may have a profound impact on how we understand the origins and spread of human civilization.

Overall, Irwanto's book aims to shed light on a lesser-known but significant region of prehistoric human history, proposing that Sundaland might have played a crucial role in shaping the early cultural and civilizational landscape of Southeast Asia and beyond.

Quarternary & Marine Geology Working Group, Geological Society of Malaysia (GSM) 2021/2022

presents

Sundaland Webinar Series: “Decoding Plato’s Narrative to Find Atlantis”
Speaker: Dhani Irwanto, Moderator: Abdullah Sulaiman

Friday, 15 October 2021

Presentation “Decoding Plato’s Narrative to Find Atlantis” by Dhani Irwanto Quarternary & Marine Geology Working GroupGeological Society of Malaysia (GSM)2021/2022presentsSundaland Webinar Series“Decoding Plato’s Narrative to Find At...

Presentation “Sundaland, The Cradle of Civilization”
Held in the GSM-IGM WEBINAR SERIES 1
Geological Society of Malaysia and Institute Geology of Malaysia
15 July 2021

https://youtu.be/7gKosUHpDH8

Presentation “Sundaland, The Cradle of Civilization” Presentation “Sundaland, The Cradle of Civilization”Held in the GSM-IGM WEBINAR SERIES 1Geological Society of Malaysia and Institute Geology of Malaysia15 Ju...

Geological Society Malaysia (GSM) is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: SUNDALAND (THE CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION)
Time: Jul 15, 2021 10:00 AM Kuala Lumpur

All interested are invited. Registration is free:
https://forms.gle/CprusyZUxrtch9eT9

The slides will be in English and the speech will be in Malay.

Will be live on Facebook (without registration):
https://www.facebook.com/gsm.org.my/?ti=as

DISTRIBUTION OF BUFFALO SACRIFICE TRADITIONS

The water buffalo is one of the animals of greatest economic and religious value used as sacrificial rituals in Southeast Asia, Indian sub-continent and southern China. In these monsoon regions of Asia, the buffalos are offered in sacrifice to divinities or divine spirits by tribal populations of various ethnic and religious belief affiliations. The role as the carrier of dead souls to the world beyond and/or of zoomorphic symbol of the ancestors is attributed to the water buffalo sacrifice. Such conception of the buffalo as the “vehicle” used by the souls of the departed to reach the afterworld is prominent.

Sesi perkongsian oleh Mas Dhani dan Rosli Hj Nor

'... banyak peralatan batu dijumpai dibawah lapisan abu letusan gunung berapi Toba di Lenggong, Perak'

The Land of Punt in Infographics

https://youtu.be/xMaGpyQ3bi4

The Land of Punt in Infographics The Land of Punt was a trading partner of Egypt. It was known for producing and exporting gold, incense, aromatic resins, cinnamon, ebony, ivory and animals....

STRIATED FROGFISH

Striated frogfish (Antennarius striatus) inhabits shallow, sandy areas or rocky and coral reefs to deep waters. This species is found in the tropical and subtropical waters from the Indian Ocean to the center of the Pacific Ocean, and in the Atlantic Ocean on the western coast of Africa and from the New Jersey coast to the southern Brazilian coast including the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean.

One kind of striated frogfish is engraved at the mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsut at at Deir el-Bahari, Egypt dated to 15th century BCE. The story of Hatshepsut’s expedition to the Land of Punt is recorded for posterity in the Egyptian art on the wall of this memorial temple. Features depicted on the wall show strong indications that the Land of Punt, or the land of gods, or the land or origin, is Sumatra.

https://atlantisjavasea.com/2015/11/14/land-of-punt-is-sumatera/

COFFEE AND ITS MYSTERIOUS ORIGIN

The earliest credible evidence of either coffee drinking or knowledge of the coffee tree appears in the middle of the 15th century, in Yemen’s Sufi monasteries. Al-Jaziri (1587) reported that one Sheikh Jamal-al-Din al-Dhabhani, m***i of Aden, was the first to adopt the use of coffee (circa 1454). He traces the spread of coffee from Arabia Felix (the present day Yemen) northward to Mecca and Medina, and then to the larger cities of Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad and Constantinople.

Yemen is recognized as the world’s first commercial coffee producer and the land of coffee’s discovery, but the origin of coffee in this southern part of Arabian Peninsula is mere speculation. Nothing was actually written about the origins of coffee until the 16th century, but by this time the truth seems to have been lost. There are many tales, which are often cited with great authority, saying that coffee was originated in Ethiopia, but with no factual evidence. The tales did not appear in writing until 1671, more than two centuries after the first known use of coffee.

Archaeological excavations in 1998 in the Emirate of Ras al-Khaimah, situated close to Dubai on the coast of the Arabian Gulf, have revealed coffee beans in soil layers dated to the early 12th century, pushing back the date at which coffee is believed to have first been drunk and traded by 250 years. Imported Chinese and Islamic pottery sherds were found in the same layers as well as wheat, barley, olive, watermelon and chickpea seeds. The beans themselves owe their preservation to the fact that they were carbonized through roasting. It is quite obvious that the crop had already become a tradable commodity in the early 12th century.

So far there is no comprehensive and global genetic study in regard of the origin of coffee. The existing studies fail to prove in which part of the world coffee was originated.

Coffee in Indonesia

Indonesia is the fourth-largest producer of coffee in the world today, after Brazil, Vietnam and Colombia. Commercial coffee cultivation in Indonesia began in the late 1600s and early 1700s, in the early Dutch colonial period. Nevertheless, the Dutch was not the one who introduced coffee in Indonesia. Historical records reveal that there have been uses of coffee in Indonesia before the Dutch implemented the coffee cultivation system (“cultuurstelsel”).

Coffee beans are among the contents in a ‘peripih’ (a stone container located at the base of a temple) of the 9th-century Plaosan temple compound in Java, together with rice, corn and Job’s tears seeds (Sumijati Atmosudiro et al 2008 and Central Java BPCB). It reveals that coffee was an important crop in the area in the 9th century.

Coffee is mentioned in an inscription written on a copper plate in Kawi (Classical Javanese) language, found in Surabaya dated to 856 AD, as reported by Norbert Pieter Berg in “Historical-statistical Notes on the Production and Consumption of Coffee” in 1880. It is stated that coffee beans was known as “wiji kawa” (meaning “the kawa seed”).

Coffee was a type of banquet for guests during the Majapahit Empire (1293 to circa 1527) as reported by Constantinus Alting Mees in “De Kroniek Van Koetai” in 1935. It is said that when the king of Kutai visited the Majapahit palace, a beverage called “kahwa” is served in an evening banquet, which is later known that it is coffee.

Coffee had been extensively cultivated in western Sumatra before the Dutch came to implement the coffee cultivation system in the area, as reported by William Marsden in “The History of Sumatra” in 1784. The people did not use the berry but the leaves to be brewed with water in a tradition called “coffee leaf drinking”, which is still being continued today. This tradition is also reported by Eduard Douwes Dekker (Multatuli) in “Max Havelaar” in 1860.

200 – 300 year old coffee trees were discovered in the south of the Sulawesi Island in 1920, that is before the Dutch introduced the coffee there in the 1830s (Antony Wild 2019 in the Srilankan “Sunday Times”).

The Name

The word “coffee” entered the English language in 1582 via the Dutch “koffie”, borrowed from the Ottoman Turkish “kahve”, in turn borrowed from the Arabic “qahwah”. The origin of the Arabic word “qahwah” is unknown and the etymologies have all been disputed. The name is not used for the berry or plant (the products of the region), which are known in Arabic as “bunn”. So, “qahwah” is apparently not an original Arabic word. There is a suggestion that it came from the name of the Kaffa Kingdom in Ethiopia, but it is debated because there is no historical record and could be the opposite way.

Referring to the “coffee leaf drinking” tradition in Sumatra, where they did not have knowledge about the use of coffee beans as a beverage, this tradition can be considered older than that practiced by the Arabs. Currently there is an assumption that this tradition was due to the Dutch era of forced cultivation that all coffee products had to be handed over to the Dutch so that they could only use the leaves. However, this assumption is rejected by some historians because of no factual evidence.

The local name for the berry or plant is “kawa” or “kawoa”. People suggest that it came from the Arabic “qahwah”, but seeing that their tradition of using the plant is older it could be the opposite way. The Arabs had been exploring Sumatra since the 7th century or earlier. Their main goal was to find exotic produce, such as camphor, incense and spices, to sell at a high price when brought home. Among those, coffee could be one of them.

Coffee was known as “kawa” in the Classical Javanese or “kahwa” in the era of Majapahit Empire. Thus it can be assumed that “kawa”, “kawoa” or “kahwa” is a Classical Javanese or Malay word. The Arabs later wrote it as “qahwah”.

In conclusion, the opportunity for scientists to conduct research on the origin of coffee is still widely open.

Dhani Irwanto, March 2021

PRE-COLUMBIAN MAIZE IN THE ARCHIPELAGO

When we search the words “origin of maize” in any of the search engines we will find more than 30 million results which mostly saying that maize (Zea mays) was originated in Mexico, backed by scientific researches. The crop was introduced to the archipelago by the Spanish as early as the 16th century.

Contrary to the above mainstream acceptance, there are evidence that maize had been cultivated in the archipelago before the colonial era which can not be explained in terms of post-Columbian introduction.

1. A bas-relief showing maize is found on a wall panel at the vicinity of the 9th-century AD Prambanan temple compound in Java (Johannessen et al 1998a, 1989a, attached figure).
2. Maize was one of the contents in a ‘peripih’ (a stone container located at the base of a temple) of the 9th-century AD Plaosan temple compound in Java, together with rice, coffee and Job’s tears.
3. Burned remnants of staple foods, comprising maize and rice, were found at Liyangan archaeological site in Central Java, carbon dated to 590 AD.
4. Maize was found together with peanut, soursop and other Asian natives in caves in Timor, belongs to the 3rd millennium BC (cited from Glover 1977).
5. Maize was a variant material to make wine as written in the ca 1030 AD classical Javanese script Arjunawiwaha, beside rice and ‘gadung’ tuber.
6. Maize is one of the crops mentioned in the Tanjung Tanah Code of Law found in Sumatra, the oldest Malay manuscript dated to between 1304 and 1436 AD.
7. Some writers interpret maize plantation on a bas-relief panel in the 9th-century Borobudur temple in Java.

If you have other evidence, please write it in the comment column.

Dhani Irwanto, March 2021